Press: Thumping the Pols

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To most Americans, Gerald R. Ford is a commoner of uncommon candor, an Everyman struggling manfully with the job of President. To Reporter Richard Reeves, Ford is "slow, unimaginative and not very articulate"—and none too candid either. In A Ford, Not a Lincoln (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; $8.95), a new and widely discussed account of Ford's first 100 days, Reeves calls Ford's rise to the presidency "a triumph of lowest-common-denominator politics, the survival of the man without enemies, the least objectionable alternative." He adds: "The President of the U.S. is just another pol."

Reeves, 38, a contributing editor of New York magazine, is not just another political reporter. In a journalistic specialty known for apple polishing, he has made his way by following the old maxim that the best way for a reporter to look upon a politician is, as a misanthropic editor once said, "down." "I do have a bias in writing about politicians," Reeves admits. "I don't feel any great obligation to recount their many and varied personal and professional virtues. That is what they, or the taxpayers, are paying for in the salaries and fees of press secretaries, media advisers and advertising agencies." He picked up his fond contempt for politicos from the fetid municipal air of Jersey City, where he grew up as the son of a county judge. "There were two groups of politicians there," Reeves recalls, "those who sold out and those who went to jail."

At first avoiding politics, he studied engineering at Hoboken's Stevens Institute of Technology, graduated in 1960 and worked days as an engineer, nights as editor of a local weekly. Reeves found he liked newspapering so much that he became a reporter for the Newark Evening News, made a name uncovering political corruption and eventually landed at the New York Times.

Pat Reactions. In three years he leaped over a city-roomful of old Times hands to become chief New York political reporter. Reeves also aroused enough jealousies to keep him from climbing further, so he quit in 1971 and became a one-man journalistic conglomerate. He wrote for both Harper's and New York, lectured at a local university, did consulting work for the Ford Foundation, was a host for a local TV talk show and took on a syndicated radio program—a regimen that brought him $75,000 a year.

Reeves began interviewing the first of 150 sources for his book after Ford became Vice President, then followed him to the White House, interrogating aides at their homes and reading mountains of documents. Says he:

"My eyes went blooey and my back hurt." Reeves had occasionally talked with Ford, but never asked for a formal interview after he became President. "His reactions to questions in other interviews seemed pat," Reeves says. "I didn't think he would be of any value to me."